Competency.

Over the last few years, this buzz word has made its way into many organizations as part of job descriptions, performance management plans, employee career pathing, etc.  Competency refers to a measurable component of an employee's behavior at work that is expected to be demonstrated as a regular part of their job.

If you are considering going down the competency path, a couple of tips:

• Define the organization's goals, values and mission first.  All competencies for all positions need to be aligned with these over anything else.  Incidentally, this will actually help in process of determining competencies.

• Once you determine the competencies, define them.  For example: "Team player" may be considered as a competency, but can be interpreted many different ways.  Define it with sub-competencies that are measurable behaviors such as "Demonstrates appropriate verbal and written communication with coworkers" or "Contributes equally to group projects."  If you fail to define vague competencies with measurable behaviors, subjectivity comes into play and performance evaluations are based on opinion rather than fact.

• Don't make your efforts fizzle by using an unrelated instrument for performance reviews.  If your expectations of performance are built into the competencies, then use the competencies to measure performance.  For example, if you have chosen "Team player" as a competency and defined it with sub-competencies, then those sub-competencies must appear as a metric on the performance evaluation form and graded individually.  Gone are the days of the same performance evaluation for everyone - now the evaluation forms are specific to the position.

• Once you determine the competencies for a given position, make sure you share them with the people in that position.  Employees will be appreciative to be told exactly what the company expects from them and performance management will be an easier process for everyone!

Developing competencies is not an easy process.  It is time-consuming and - well - somewhat painful. But once the process is complete and your job descriptions, performance evaluations, career pathing efforts and training events all speak the language of competency, employees have a clearer sense of where they've been and where they can go!

How many of you out there are speaking the competency language? How have you incorporated it into your employee management programs?